Luigi Bazzoni's Le Orme (1975) aka Footprints on the Moon is playing in 35mm at Anthology Film Archives in NY tonight. This movie isn't "good", but has eerily beautiful cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. I'm not going to say it's not weird. This is probably something 03 and jenk would be into.

The full movie is on youtube. A DVD edition is available from Shameless in the UK (review here).

Alice Cespi (Florinda Bolkan) begins to see her life fall apart due to strange memories from childhood when she was forced to watch a film called "Footprints on the Moon" involving an unethical experiment in leaving astronauts stranded on the moon's surface. Alice has terrible dreams and begins to become addicted to tranquilizers. The drugs and her deteriorating mental condition cause her to miss work and she is eventually fired, whereupon she travels to a dilapidated former tourist area called Garma after receiving a mysterious postcard. There, she runs into a girl named Paula Burton (Nicoletta Elmi), who tells her that she looks exactly like another woman, Nicole, currently staying at the faded resort. Alice then encounters a series of strange people and circumstances, all leading her closer to unlocking the possibly deadly mystery.

Some screencaps of varying quality:

haha yeah you got me.i loved this movie, haven't seen it in quite some time.i feel it had a huge influence on 'the american astronaut' by cory mcabee.

anyone seen 'goldberg and eisenberg'? i watched this last week and it is absolutely brilliant. i think its bizarre that this guy, oren carmi, literally has only one film, and he wrote directed and produced it. while watching it, i thought it was done by the same guy as 'big bad wolves', which makes me pretty excited to watch more israeli cinema. commonly referred to as 'israeli coen brothers' which is very accurate. if the plot isnt readily apparent, a very quiet nerdy guy makes a classified ad for a date and it ends up being some asshole thats pulling a joke who eventually tortures the dude mentally and ruins his life, so he goes crazy and fights back.

Luigi Bazzoni's Le Orme (1975) aka Footprints on the Moon is playing in 35mm at Anthology Film Archives in NY tonight. This movie isn't "good", but has eerily beautiful cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. I'm not going to say it's not weird. This is probably something 03 and jenk would be into.

The full movie is on youtube. A DVD edition is available from Shameless in the UK (review here).

Alice Cespi (Florinda Bolkan) begins to see her life fall apart due to strange memories from childhood when she was forced to watch a film called "Footprints on the Moon" involving an unethical experiment in leaving astronauts stranded on the moon's surface. Alice has terrible dreams and begins to become addicted to tranquilizers. The drugs and her deteriorating mental condition cause her to miss work and she is eventually fired, whereupon she travels to a dilapidated former tourist area called Garma after receiving a mysterious postcard. There, she runs into a girl named Paula Burton (Nicoletta Elmi), who tells her that she looks exactly like another woman, Nicole, currently staying at the faded resort. Alice then encounters a series of strange people and circumstances, all leading her closer to unlocking the possibly deadly mystery.

Some screencaps of varying quality:

Thanks for mentioning this one. The film's overall dreaminess works nicely with its occasional giallo insanity.

so, Dallas Buyers Club i was like nah, Wild i was like lol, Café de Flore sounds floral so i always liked the sound of that never saw it, then along with other movie people i first heard about Jean-Marc Vallée from The Young Victoria because Scorsese was a producer and i've never seen that movie either.

then the other day my roommate, who prefers multiplex movies, he told me about and loaned me his copy of C.R.A.Z.Y., and it's impressive man. i'm glad i watch movies sitting down because this movie would've made me fall over repeatedly.

it's a coming of age movie that's My Life as a Dog + The Long Day Closes. it's equals parts cinema and character. of course Scorsese wanted to produce the movie he made after this.

the thing that's scary about watching a movie like this is few people will make a movie this good ever.

this and Gangs of Wasseypur remind me:

a) never say i've already seen the best movies from a year there were to seeb) stop not immediately trusting Scorsese's movie tastes

there's not another Jean-Marc Vallée movie you'd recommend? this is the only one of his i've seen and i'm currently seducible on this topic.

Denis Villeneuve ruined me with Incendies. i'm emotional as fuck and that kind of drama, it's rude. there's real shit in life and cool story fuck you. that feels like a story and i think it's dangerous to go through life looking for your story. so, like the Paul Haggis Crash. have you rewatched Crash, do you remember how much people disliked it and (elderly) Ebert had to explain himself and (elderly) Oscars voted it best? that year had way too much chat about Crash. i'm glad Incendies wasn't talked about. but Villeneuve has all these movies. i'm not currently seducible to Villeneuve so, i mean, is Maelstrom the one to check out? i promise you Sicario won't win me. Sicario is that good and better and everyone can have it. this is my long bitchy paragraph.

what i learned while reading about C.R.A.Z.Y. is this Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time "a list compiled by the Toronto International Film Festival ranking what are the considered the best Canadian films." hell, that list might've been mentioned at Xixax, act natural. i'm saying i looked at it today with positive curiosity:

i feel like i want to see Atanarjuat on the big screen and someone should play it. all that snow, big screen seems better. Mon Oncle Antoine, represent. i like coming-of-age stories as much as Canada. The Sweet Hereafter is the Egoyan they've decided to stick with, i like when the '93 list has The Adjuster at ten. Léolo ok, that's fun enough i wish i could stream it, coming of age. Jésus de Montréal i've never seen, does anyone want to declare now that they love that movie? i think Dead Ringers is Videodrome spelled wrong. My Winnipeg highlights the particular emphasis on Canadian movies talking about being in Canada. Stories We Tell i never saw but i've heard the good things, and Les Ordres was the only movie that's flying with poor distribution, Canada get no respect or what.

that was my intro into saying i ordered this and i'm excited about it, i think i'll like it

Unfortunately, no. Haven't seen any of his work that precedes C.R.A.Z.Y.. And nothing after has really recaptured the same magic. Not that they're bad films or anything. Just that C.R.A.Z.Y. is so good.

On the Denis Villeneuve front, it's hard to say if you'll like it, but Maelstrom is probably my favourite of all his films (haven't seen Sicario yet) and I, too, had difficulty with Incendies. It's narrated by a fish, if that helps?

Atanarjuat is definitely worth seeking out and is quite the big screen experience. Its status as the number one top of all time, though, probably has more to do with cultural baggage than the film alone. TIFF people are like that. Still, excellent.

Denys Arcand is like the Canadian Bergman. Jesus de Montreal is great, but my favourites are The Decline of the American Empire and especially its sequel The Barbarian Invasions, which, I guarantee, isn't featured only because it was too popular (again, TIFF people are like that). I heartily recommend it.

i miss the people, though they were kind of embarrassing. i recall this movie fondly and while with it i recoiled, so i feel about Goin' Down the Road similar to the traditional teenager's feelings about a parent.

i think it understands human emotions better than it understands cinema, and sometimes i held that against it but sometimes the emotions gushed. there felt like very little separation between the actors and their performances, and it felt like a realistic melodrama, which is impressive and happens under like cosmic frequencies with non-professional actors playing characters similar to themselves

i'm not sure one could shoot these type of emotions these days. i'm not sure we're talented at carrying our emotions anymore. it is perhaps that pop culture now means what human emotions met then, and it's a bit like Clerks means to our times what Goin' Down the Road meant to 1970.

1970. right there at the beginning of the decade. its themes and general aesthetics have a lot in common with 60s naturalism and earth beauty and things like that, but also this type of narrative comes into fruition during the 70s, as to say Cassavetes went from Shadows (59) to Faces (68) to Husbands and Minnie and Moskowitz and A Woman Under the Influence and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night (70-77, Gloria was 1980).

both Goin' Down the Road and Husbands were 1970. in Goin' Down the Road there's a dance club scene and the dancing is perhaps called the chicken dance. everyone is dead serious about dancing like chickens for fun. that's something. the two main characters at one point work reinstalling bowling pins and returning balls, and i hadn't before much thought about bowling alleys before machines.

basically it's a cinematic variation of Kmart realism, and i wouldn't want to live there but i appreciate the sharing of life emotions. i don't know much about the cultural history of Canada and i've never seen it this way. glad i watched the movie

The Amphibian Man (1962), a Soviet scifi love story with some of the most gorgeous color cinematography you’ll find outside the films of Michael Powell, is now available to watch for free on youtube in 720p with English subtitles.

An almost fable-like story based upon the eponymous novel by Alexander Beliaev. It focuses on a youth named Ichthyander who was surgically altered to survive under the sea. Unlike traditional science fiction movies of the time the film focuses much more on the concept of love won and lost.

Better plot description from Wikipedia, spoilers:

The story is set in a seaside port in Argentina (but filmed in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR), largely among a community of pearl fishers. The protagonist is the adopted son of a doctor/scientist who was sometime in the past forced to save the boy's life by implanting him with shark gills. Thus he is able to live under water, but must keep his secret from the world. The conflict arises from his falling in love with a pearl-fisher's beautiful daughter. His secret is discovered and the girl's stern father attempts to exploit Ichthyander for his ability. Due to being kept caged under water, his ability to breathe in the open air is affected, and he must now permanently live in the sea (at least for several years). Although set free, the lovers are permanently separated from each other.

Although ostensibly a lost-love-tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, the film has a significant focus on greed and commercial exploitation (of the pearl-greedy fishermen), possibly under the influence of Socialist Realism.

A novelist and an accountant meet while they are traveling for work, and though they both are in relationships, their one-night stand could become something more.

This movie is like a less sentimental version of Before Sunrise, and the chemistry between the leads carries the whole thing to an impressive degree. There's constant tension between how much the character's faces tell you they care about each other, and their inability to explore that outside of the hermetically sealed circumstances of their relationship. A lot of movies exist about infidelities and secret trysts...it's hard to explain what makes this particular story so compelling. A moment halfway through, where they're both drunk and nude on an apartment balcony, Chris Messina playfully shouting down to the street below, his words cut up by her fits of laughter, somehow feels key:

"Your lives turn out the way you thought it would?! Your lives turn out the way you thought it would?!"

The IMDB rating is abysmally low for no good reason. One of those films that slips through the cracks. It's streaming on Hulu right now. Makes me want to see Captain Fantastic!

I highly recommend Edward Yang's movie The Terrorizers (1986), which has such gobsmackingly beautiful cinematography I can't even explain. It's available as a region-free, English-subtitled Taiwanese blu-ray via YesAsia (it comes back in stock periodically), and by...other means if you must. It really deserves to be seen in HD, though.

The lives of anonymous strangers become intricately intertwined in this 1986 effort by late Taiwanese auteur Edward Yang. Following the sudden death of his superior, a doctor frames his colleague in order to succeed as the clinic’s director. The doctor’s writer wife, meanwhile, is experiencing a mid-life crisis, struggling to finish her next novel while surrendering to the advances of an ex-boyfriend. Elsewhere, a hippie photographer randomly snaps a delinquent girl escaping from a crime scene and becomes obsessed with her. The girl is locked up at home by her mother, and begins making random prank calls, which in turn affect the lives of the doctor and his wife.

The collage of chance encounters in The Terrorizers vividly portrays the degenerating psychic life of the Taipei city dwellers through disjointed narrative and multiple storylines. Set for brief moments against an eye-catching poster of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? on the wall, the irony constructed by Yang turns out to be all the more poignant, considering how his quiet characters never really speak up amid their simmering rage, before boiling over completely. Similar treatment is given to the film’s supposedly dramatic plot elements, such as extramarital affairs, police raids and violence, which are delivered with unusual calmness and tranquility.

As with many other examples of Taiwanese New Wave cinema in the 1980s, The Terrorizers realistically records the people’s private sentiment at a specific moment of Taiwan’s rapid socio-economical transformation. Nevertheless, the film’s depiction of the experience of urban ennui and desperation remains largely universal. No matter how one sees fit to interpret the film’s double endings, Yang’s vision of urban life looks all but doomed. The director once explained that this is essentially one tragic ending - that somebody would inevitably be hurt - told in two different ways. For a bleak story narrated without any comic relief, it is a fitting conclusion that is at once profound and disturbing.